Kelly! Kelly!
by Ezra Cross
Summary: During a heat wave in July, Kelly Severide is out doing his civic duty, checking on residential homes to make sure the populace is riding it out. Entering the home of old Mrs. Pell, he leaves with something he never anticipated. Bullet wounds. Running for his life, can Kelly find safety before he bleeds to death? Or will he be murdered under the Windy City sun.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** This is a little surprise book. Had a little smash of inspiration and I simply ran with it:) Please enjoy! This will be a short story.

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><p><strong>Kelly! Kelly!<strong>

_Chapter 1_

The day didn't start out hot but one could feel in the air the sweltering sickness rising from the black top pavement like a summer disease. Over head, light went unfiltered through the banished storm clouds and reflected off of tin roofs, old tarmac, and the backs of construction workers. Old Town was seeing a renovation on this, the hottest day of July, and the men felt the heat coming like an old man's arthritis can sense the rain. Sweat-drenched in anticipation, shovels dug into the earth to clear the path for the latest area improvement project. A few men, Hispanics and blacks stood up with their arms draped over their shovels to watch as that pretty pencil skirt scrambled past. Javier didn't miss an opportunity to send her away with a whistle of approval.

Latasha Day had twelve appointments to keep, three open houses, and a post-it stack of calls to return just by lunch time. Chicago never let up, even for the hardest workers of the Windy City. Her momma taught her to keep low, work hard, go to college and make something of herself that had those fine young black men come running to her door. She did her momma proud too.

With heels clicking in time with her steps she gave an appreciative nod to the tall Mexican in the construction cap and considered a wink to the goliath of a black man by his elbow, but in the end decided against it. Her thumb floated across her palm to touch the wedding band newly affixed to her finger. She'd done her momma very proud and she planned to keep her meeting with that fine new husband at 1:30pm sharp to look over their latest financials and discuss whether or not they might be able to afford one of those houses she spent so much time selling to other affluent families.

Working today in Old Town was a digression from her typical beat path. This side of the Chicago tracks hadn't seen much of the latest city-wide improvement budgets. Its very name, Old Town, was designated by the old timers who still sat out on their stoop turfs till the drug lords and dealers took over for the night shift. She felt safe enough strutting by at such an early time in the morning, but then again the .38 Special in her Prada bag also gave another measure of security. Momma didn't raise no fool.

Passing by a second construction site in the endless line along Main Street, she took a sharp left and extracted her phone from her pocket. Marcus called again, the third time since she'd left that morning and sent a follow-up text.

"Thinking of you . . . "winky-face"." He still had yet to master the point of emoticons, and so spelled them out instead. Upturning the corners of her passion-pink lips, her fingers slid across the keys in reply.

"Winky-face."

She hit the send button and shut down the screen, sliding it back into her pocket as she kept her eye out around the neighborhood. As far as Old Town went she was in the better half. Most of the people along this stretch might have been white trash or rednecks, bottle guzzlers and bootleggers but at least they didn't come out till dark. Like ghosts emerging from their tombstone prisons, these people hid in their aluminum sided homes and failed to surface for anything less than fire or death. And sometimes, not even death.

She stayed on Second Street for a block, cut across an alley to Third Street and went up another half a block. She liked walking. It helped her get the lay of the land, especially in an area such as this. Of course she'd been accosted a time or two in the past but when it came time to pull her mad-black-woman card she was a pro. Extracting her phone a second time, Latasha rechecked the house number, 112 Third Street.

She looked around at the adjoining yards. Short chain fences separated one pack of barking dogs from another and tiny alleys leading to nowhere gave the homes a sense of privacy that they explicitly asked for in every plastic "Keep Out" sign posted in the boarded windows. The one thing she did not find were house numbers. Returning the phone a second time to the well-worn pocket, she traveled straight down the causeway and sought out some other living soul still possessing a pulse or even the potential Century 21 sign she'd come to locate. Getting a home to sell in this area would be a challenge, but with the improvements promised to sweep in, she hoped an early buy-in would give her a wicked return in the end. The house to her left seemed to show some signs of life. The front door was pulled open and a woman passed by the entry a few times in her long, faded pink night dress. Nothing screamed assistance like an old lady in her overnight hair curlers.

Latasha pulled into the yard and put on her best realtor smile, yanking her hem down a few bonus inches so as not to offend the lady. A line of dying flowers in old clay pots lead to the door step. Plastic signs professed that a dog may live there but she could hear nothing that would verify it. Grey grass, old and dried in the heat, crunched underfoot like corn chips. A heap of clothes were what blocked the doorway and kept the breeze flowing in.

"Hello?" Latasha called inside, adjusting the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder. "Hello, miss? I was wondering if you might give me some directions to one of your neighbors?"

"No!"

The scream, like the voice of a suffering animal flung at her. She was used to a little rejection now and again, but sometimes persistence tended to pay off.

"I'm Mrs. Day, I'm a realtor working here in Old Town. You mind just giving me a hint to where I can find—GAH!" She screamed, jumping sideways as the crumple of clothes came to life. A long white hand, dyed red in blood, grabbed the skin against her ankle as its owner tried desperately to push himself up.

"No!" the man screamed again. He pulled his hand back and gripped the landing in his fingers as his body dragged out the front door. "Out! Get out! She's crazy, run!"

Latasha froze. Like a frightened doe, her eyes flung up into the dark of the house and over the man she realized was dressed in a firefighter's uniform. A trail of blood ten feet long ran from somewhere inside that home to the front porch and continued to follow the man down the steps. The old woman, the one she'd seen crossing the doorway appeared again. A cigarette hung limply from between her thin lips. The long fleece moo-moo draped from her shoulders to her calves and was no less peculiar than the old .45 revolver in her hands.

Latasha screamed. She stole off her handbag, searching for her gun but it was too late. With a lazy, unpracticed air the old woman raised the long barreled revolver and shot the girl. Struggling with both hands to pull back the hammer, the woman shot again and repeated a third time.

Kelly Severide watched the dying realtor as the shock and pain filled her eyes and distorted the features of her once beautiful face. She was dead in seconds. He threw a look back at the insane woman in the old house. If he didn't find a way to run now, she was going to kill him next.

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><p>Please review! Liked it? Hated it? Anticipations?<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Next chapter will most likely be the last...though i haven't finished writing it as yet

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><p><strong>Kelly! Kelly!<strong>

Chapter 2

"A mess. What a mess. People keep coming up and making a mess. Always cleaning. Can't keep on top of it."

Her name was Mrs. Pell, an elderly woman part of the neighborhood check list Severide had spent the majority of his shift checking in on. There were forty-three houses on his list and she, the owner of house number thirty-one, was the first person who decided to shoot him rather than take the free offer and care he came to provide in the sweltering heat wave sweeping over Chicago. He knocked on the door, she opened it up, and two minutes after allowing him to haul a cooler of water out of his car and into her house, he found the round of the revolver digging through his upper chest.

He wasn't sure what happened to him at first but after a moment his brain replayed the images that sidled up to the present. The house was dark, oppressively hot, and stunk of trash and death. The front room seemed relatively clear and provided him a space to set things down before turning to leave again. He saw the flash of the muzzle through the light filtering in through the tar-stained window shades, but that was all. He didn't trust his own eyes for the image. An old women just didn't have the gusto to pull out a gun like that, on someone who came to help her, let alone pull the trigger. But he was wrong, and she did.

He collapsed first to his knees as his chest exploded in fiery pain. His right hand flew up to his left shoulder to press on the wound. The spurts of blood made his fingers and palm slick. Mrs. Pell had trouble getting the second bullet cocked and ready to go at the hammer required both hands to pull back. While she dealt with that particular distraction, he fell forward onto his face and began dragging himself toward the doorway and the potential for safety beyond.

Casey was out there, somewhere, checking other houses on the side streets. Three or four blocks down the rest of his truck crew were doing the same and checking in on the elderly beside a squad from the local P.D.

Kelly had to find one of them, hail down a car, or just plain get away.

He fought his way to his feet and stripped a little of his gear along the way to lighten the load as he tried to run. The cord of his radio exploded in a mass of circuits like spaghetti string pasta. The bullet pierced it first before carving its path into the flesh of his chest. Adreneline surged into his veins like heroin from a syringe. It hit his heart, pumping, pumping, pumping it faster until Kelly felt some of the pain recede and his legs moved a little faster. He breathed a little less. A tightness clamped hold of his chest like a coming pneumothorax. He needed help.

"Casey!" he screamed into the rays of heat rising from the ground. "Casey! Help! Somebody, hel—"

BAM!

Severide threw himself sideways when the sound of a gun's rapport erupted behind him. His shoulder hit the side of a house and sent a wave of pain from his belly to his ears. He couldn't think. A momentary blindness kept him from moving. He needed to move, to stand, to run, or to save himself before that woman dragged the lever of that old revolver down again and planned to end it all for him. He forced his eyes open and frantically searched around. No Casey or cops were jogging toward him with guns drawn. There was a door above him. Severide through a glance over his shoulder at the oncoming old woman with her .45 looking like something Dirty Harry should have used. He might reach the door. No farther than that, but he could at least reach the door.

Severide dragged himself back up to his feet and grabbed the railing in one hand. Up again he went. Four stairs to the door. He mounted them. His hand wrapped around the screen door and yanked it out. Next he took hold of the door knob and forced that inward. It didn't budge. He threw his shoulder into it and screamed as the pain rushed him. The entry never budged. In a last ditch effort he shoved the bottom of a closed fist against the frame.

"Help! Someone lemme in! Help!" Severide screamed.

Shockingly the door opened. A man answered. He was old and haggard with skin pulled taught over protruding bones. His features altered from curious disgruntlement at being disturbed to shock and horror as a weapon leveled with the back of Sevaride's skull. The gun bucked in the elderly woman's hand as she aimed, causing the shot to skim sideways and burrow into the cheek of the homeowner. The bullet exploded from the back of the old man's skull. His body bucked, shook once with a mighty, shocked, gasp and he collapsed in a heap.

Severide turned around. The woman already had the gun cocked back again. She was getting handier with the massive lug of a weapon. Severide bum rushed the doorway. He heaved, and gasped, trying desperately to drag the body away from the door and allow him to slam it shut. But as strong as he was, he couldn't move that old man. He felt his breath sticking in his chest. The first wave of adrenaline petered to nothing under that man's weight.

"Stop!" Severide cried. "Please, stop! What are you doing?"

The gun already leveled toward him and bucked in her grip for a second time as the massive weapon fired. Severide tried to slide behind the plywood doorway but it wasn't enough to stop the .45 round from slamming into his thigh. He fell over backward. The eruption of red flowed up and down his pant leg in swollen hot pools.

The woman approached, feeding another silvery round from the pocket of her filthy pink fleece into the chamber of her revolver. She mounted the steps, sidestepped the body, and stood over Severide while the gun readied in her hands.

"Stop! What did I do? What did any of us do?" Kelly whispered, his hands now pressing against the pulsing bleed in his leg.

Mrs. Pell snapped the chamber back into place and yanked a little at her nightgown to fix its off-side shape.

"Do? She asked as she worked. "You bother me. You didn't have to do anything."

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><p>Please review!<p> 


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: here we are again... most likely only one more chapter

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><p>Chapter 3<p>

Just before death one may have the experience of seeing the faces of their loved ones. Like his "life flashing before his eyes", this moment is deeply ingrained in the electrical process of the brain which trigger under extreme duress. In Kelly Severide's case, he saw nothing. No coming flash of white light, no looming darkness in haze of red, and no view of his friends or families lives without him. He didn't see his father, mother, or sister. Even the men and women of the fire house remained hidden from him. The gun lifted and Kelly imagined that final blow coming, the one that would slice his brain into equal parts and paint the linoleum floor in red. He braced himself against it with eyes squeezed tight.

He heard the click and waited to see if either the wide beyond or the pain of a missed kill shot hit him first. When neither occurred, he forced his eyes open to see something he'd never expected. The woman was gone.

Kelly tried to pick himself up, despite the rush of agony from his now multiple gunshot wounds. He gasped, wrapping his fingers around the bookshelf directly where his body fell. A shifting of something by the doorway caused him to hurry to his feet. The gunshot through his left leg slowed him down more than the one in his shoulder. He couldn't restrain the scream that filtered through his vocal cords as he struggled to stand, walk, run for his very life.

Distracted in her dementia-like daze the woman perhaps assumed that Kelly was dead, despite her attempted shot meeting with an empty chamber. She'd moved to the front door with the long-nosed revolver in hand and ready for another kill while her other arm worked to drag the dead man into the building.

Kelly had to run.

Colors hazed before him, causing his steps to be uncoordinated, drunken. He finds the heavy age of the home hanging over him like a death cloud. Every step he took toward what might be his freedom, or doom, was agony rending against his soul. He stumbles, falls down a few short steps and crawls with one hand over one knee to the only available door he can find. Locked. Three of them, two chains and a bolt seal him inside and keeps his potential freedom out. Kelly climbs the doorway, leans, and barely manages to pull the locks apart before the door is forced inward.

"Casey!" Severide exclaims in a mixture of pure elation and horror. Casey had no idea what danger he'd stepped into. Kelly had to get them out, away, had to keep them moving and running. Casey couldn't be the third person to potentially aid in his safety and be left dead in the insane woman's wake.

"What did you do, stop for a beer? I went looking for your car and didn't see you."

Severide shoved him back, down the outside stoop and into the back of the house. He leaned on Casey's shoulder, sputtering and bleeding as he urged Casey away.

"Kelly, what are you-"

"Shut up and run!" Severide cried, rounding the stoop and plunging them down the squat alley between the two row houses.

"Kelly? Kelly! Is that blood?" Casey demanded, trying to pull away from Severide and widen his gaze. Severide pulled up short beside him, limping and gasping as he guided them away from the house.

"Call the P.D. She's nuts. She's going to kill us! Get Halstead on the horn. Get S.W.A.T. down here for all I care!" Kelly refused to stop until he was forced to. They found a seven foot security fence blocking their alley exit. Severide reached for it and grabbed the chain links in his hands. Perhaps he considered attempting to scale it, but the hot metal diamonds only burned him back like flames. He spun around the way they'd come, inhaled sharply, and began to sink down.

"Kelly!" Casey carried his friend to the black top driveway and worked his hands over the man's gear. He came away in smears of new and dried blood. Casey's panic escalated. He dove through the scant layers of Kelly's clothing to find the sucking hole in the fellow fireman's chest and the eruption of blood sprouting from his thigh.

"She's gonna kill us." Severide insisted in exhaustion and adrenaline-fueled terror. His good hand never released Casey.

The lieutenant began to understand how detrimental a situation he'd walked right into. His back straightened like a ramrod. One hand eased down on the looming pneumothorax on the side of Kelley's chest where the bullet hole filled his chest in blood. He glared down the way they'd come through the tendrils of heat waving through the air like invisible, dancing serpents. Casey's spare hand dragged the radio down from his shoulder and over the front of his mouth.

"Hurry!" Kelly whispered, gasping and moaning under the weight of pain seeping through him. "Casey, Hurry! Please, God, hurry."

"This is Lieutenant from Fire House 51, Truck 81. I have a man down. I repeat, one of my firefighters is down. Multiple gunshot wounds. We are in an alley on Third Street, facing West. There is a shooter in the area. I need an ambulance immediately and I need some cops over her to handle the scene. Again, I have a man down. I need immediate assistance!"

"Matt!" Severide screamed, shoving himself up on the one good arm to see the old woman crossing around the back of the house. The gun's hammer was pulled back and she had all ten fingers wrapped around the grip like she may begin to fire it again.

_"Casey, this is Detective Voight. Repeat that location. We are en route, ambulance is on its way. Give us a better idea where to find you."_

Severide's iron grip clamped down on Casey's arm. For both their sakes, Matt switched off his radio and slowly raised his hands. "Ma'am, my name is Lieutenant Casey. I just came up here looking for my friend, that's all. No one is here to disturb you. It's not safe out right now. I need you to return to your home and call 911."

"It's her!" Kelly whispered despondently. "Casey, it's her. You don't get it, it's her."

The gun leveled in Casey's direction and from the moment the muzzle flashed, Severide's mind created a vision of death for his best friend. He saw Casey's neck exploding in a flood of arterial spray as his body collapsed back onto Severide's legs. This was Hell. The heat, the insanity, the death and wreak of bodies was all Severide needed to be convinced he'd somehow been whisked to that place of condemned souls. He was in a living, unending, nightmare. A character in a horror film, destined to watch everyone he cared about be killed on after the other.

She did shoot. The bullet went high and sailed harmlessly into the brick façade of the adjacent building. Casey jumped, unharmed, but not unaffected mentally, by the very near miss. He clambered to stand and took a step forward to plead with the woman. His arms remained extended, desperate, begging.

"Hang on a second!" he cried. In the back of his mind he judged the distance to her, how much force it may take to yank the gun away. He watched are he arthritic fingers, bent at angles and with knuckles the constancy of stones, attempted to pull back the hammer. If he did nothing, she was simply going to shoot at them again.

The wail of approaching sirens created a crescendo in the background of Kelly screaming for Casey to stop. Something, though, had come over the man. They needed to act, fast and immediately before the danger returned. If he happened to be slow enough not to reach that gun before she could create a deadly weapon out of it again, then they were both dead anyway. Casey ran for her. She was unaffected by his approach and totally consumed in her need to readjust the hammer for the pistol. Casey grabbed for it, even got his hand around the barrel and his other straight-armed right into her chest when the muzzle exploded in his hand. The women, determined in her old age jammed the gun forward and out of Casey's singed grip, the hammer came back again and the third shot she dug right into his side.

Casey didn't feel it, not at first. His mind filled in his need to fight back and defend that comrade left bleeding and potentially dying on the pavement behind him. He fought for the gun again, struggled and jostled with the woman as the police cars lined up in the mouth of the alley way.

A fourth shot went wild. For all Casey knew it could have gotten him too. He felt the spurt of blood flowing down his side and very suddenly his raging heart beat wasn't enough to overcome the sudden loss in blood pressure. He weakened almost instantly. The old woman threw the gun barrel against the wound that tore a hole into his kidney and suddenly he collapsed in a heap.

"DROP IT!" came the shouts of officers rushing to their rescue. Sirens wailed from the squad cars and blue dashboard lights rebounded around them.

Kelly Severide, though, tried to warn them all. "Shoot her! He cried out to them. "Do something! Just shoot her!"

"Shoot her." Casey whispered, gasping from the ground like a fish tossed on land.

The old woman lifted her weapon again, aimed for the closest officer, and the report of a gun tore through the echogenic alley.

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><p>hope you have enjoyed! thank you for the reviews, and do please leave some more.<p> 


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